With the different distros of Linux, do different things support different distros? Like Zoom is support on Arch but not Mint, and Steam is supported in Mint but not Arch; or if an app supports Linux, it is on all distros? And if there is differences, do you have different partitions for different types of Linux?
All distros are equivalent, as far as software is concerned. They all have access to the same open source software, and Flatpak; AppImage; and Snap can be used for extra portability.
Think of a distro like a pre-configured image of linux. You can always change the configuration later, if you desire. For example, the Desktop Environment. All you have to do is just install a different DE package (usually via command line)
The DE has a major impact on user experience. Use KDE plasma for a more windows-familiar experience, or Gnome for a more Mac-familiar experience. Or experiment with others
The Linux Experiment is a good resource
When an app supports linux, it can do so by either:
- packaging it for popular distro repositories,
- giving instructions on how to build the app from the source code
or
- package it on distro-agnostic, package management solutions like flatpak or appImage.
These last ones are sandboxed environments. That means they have their own dependencies isolated from your system, so they dont have to deal with every distros pecularities at the cost of using more storage space. This is very useful for developers and in your case benefitial for the user because you can have both steam and zoom via flatpak on mint, arch or any obscure distro that has flatpak available, without any major problems.
Edit: Formatting
Yup. The big downside to flatpak is that, as you said, it takes up more space.
To make a Windows comparison, imagine needing to install Java separately for every single program that needs it. Flatpaks tend to be orders of magnitude larger than technically necessary, simply because they’re sandboxed and come with everything they need to run, even if you already have it installed.
